The Nightmare of Waking
by Skalidra
Summary: Sleep is supposed to be a thing of rest and peace, but to one dead man walking, Jason Todd, it's anything but. Sleep means nightmares, blood, and the cackle of a laugh in the back of his mind that echoes and will never, ever, go away. - Inspired by a picture set, the link is inside.


Alright, so recently I got a Tumblr, and I ran across this picture set here: Skalidra. tumblr. (just add com) / post /109530709640 /counting-bodies-like-a-sheep

An hour later and some frantic typing, here you guys go. I can't say 'enjoy' this, because it is dark and depressing, but maybe just... I hope it gives you feels? I changed a bit of the dialogue to sound more natural, and I added in transitions between the pictures, but that was the extent of my meddling. **Warnings **are: canonical character death, angst and feels, all the dark symbolism, claustrophobia, and being buried alive (sorta).

* * *

The ropes are tight around his arms and his ankles, biting even through the leather jacket and the black combat boots. No give, no escape, no chance of rescue and the chair is only dark wood but it's too strong, too stable. The metal handcuffs are cold even past his gloves, and he takes in a shaking breath and raises his head. No helmet, no weapons, no defenses. No _chance_.

The room is empty, but the wires and explosives piled around him are the only thing that matters anyway. Duct tape and half stripped, patched together craftsmanship but they'll work. He knows, in the sick twist of his stomach and the dull resignation at the back of his mind, that they'll _work_.

A beep slices through the silence, and he closes his eyes and hangs his head again.

_Six_.

The smell and taste of blood comes to his senses — familiar but _awful_, even after all these years — and the ropes are gone and he's on his knees, with the feel of rain against his back and the scent of wet dirt in his nose. He opens his eyes again and there's the orange-red splash of color against the nearly black dirt, a bird — a _robin_, his mind supplies, laughing and _howling_ — with its neck too far to the side, wings tucked close and there's _blood_ across its feathers, soaking into the ground but he doesn't know how to fix it, even where it's _coming _from.

And the metal of the handcuffs digs into his wrists and it _hurts_, too tight and too sharp and too _cold_.

"Who killed the robin?" a voice asks, and his head snaps up. To the open mouth and sharp teeth of a bat, hanging upside down from a tree, and it shrieks in a way that sounds like _laughter_ and drops, taking off and spinning into the sky. Past the stone of an angel with a black crow on its shoulder, and the stone turns and _looks _at him.

"Stupidity and _uselessness_," it hisses, with the rasp of metal against concrete, and he follows the line of the statue down to the gravestone beneath. His heart speeds, hands clenching and twisting, and he pushes away but the ground is sinking beneath his knees and he can't get away as it starts to swallow him. "He killed _himself_."

'Here lies Jason Todd,' the gravestone mocks, and the crow screeches and spreads its wings as he sinks beneath the earth, the dirt pressing against his clothes and his skin. Black eyes stare at him, and laughter rings through the rain and into his head, screaming and shaking and _insane _laughter that makes him open his mouth to scream but then there's _dirt _in it. He chokes and slams his eyes shut, spitting and trying just to _breathe_ until air meets his face again, the earth holding the rest of him but when he opens his eyes it's to open space and light.

The white roses around the body glow, and he's _inches _from a face that's his own but younger, still and pale with so much more than just the white light. It's silent, _so _silent, and the laughing is gone but he doesn't know if that's better or worse.

There's another slicing beep, _loud _inside the confined space of earth and wood, and the other him's eyes flick open, bluer than his have been in _years_.

_Five_.

It stares up at him, blank and not really alive, not really _seeing_. He tries to recoil but he's trapped, held still in the grasp of wet earth and cold metal, and the corpse — _his _corpse, patched together and covered up but under that suit is blood and bruises and he can _feel _it — parts its mouth, white teeth stained red and with the liquid promise of more where he can't see it. Leaking from the slices on the inside of its cheeks, running back and filling its throat, _his _throat, till all he can taste is blood and he can't _breathe _past it.

"Why are you back?" it asks, still so flat and _dead_ that it scares him, _terrifies _him.

Then it _smiles_ with the bloody teeth, and the silence presses in against his ears as the glow from the flowers fades, darkness adding in and he can feel the press of wood against his back, against his bound hands.

"You should have been _rotting _six feet under the ground," it whispers, and its skin is peeling away, falling back and the scream catches in his throat on the _blood_. The fabric of the black suit and white shirt wrinkles and decays, falling apart and its flesh draws tight and darkens into the brown of age and decay. Blood and the smell of rot and _death _fills his mouth, his nose, and lips peel back away from those stained teeth into a parody of a grin.

Cobwebs stretch across the interior as the white roses shrivel and die, black spiders crawling across the wood and the strands of their webs, and he actually does shout and shake his head _violently _when there's the touch of one crawling up his jaw.

When he looks back up the second shout — bubbling into a scream or maybe just hysterical laughter that will ring and _shriek _in the back of his head — freezes in his chest. The white of bone and the dulled red and green of the suit, _his _suit, looks back at him, one bony hand held up to its skull and the cracked, _shattered _domino mask. The black cape is torn, fading away at the edges like it's disintegrating before his eyes, and the gaping slashes in the costume reveal splintered bone and splashes of dried, rust colored blood that flakes away as the bones crack further.

"No one _cares _about you, anyway," it hisses, with that artificial grin that's white, red; a slash of a mouth that's his and _not _his all at the same time. And it parts with the creak and crack of a skeleton, and it _laughs _and the abrupt beep cuts that off and at least that's _better_.

_Four_.

"You're _dead_," the skull of Robin snarls.

"You _failed_," blue eyes and pale skin whisper.

"You failed _me_," says a grim mouth and a black cowl, in a dark growl that's dismissive and _furious _at the same time. White lenses where there should be eyes and the sweep of something designed to intimidate and _scare_, and all he wants is to protest '_no, please,' _but then that mouth lifts in a sneer and the world is turning, dropping him roughly against polished wood. Light shines down, and his hands are in front of him now and not even cuffed but all he can do is stare up at the black sweep of a cape and the wide grin of a mouth that doesn't belong on that face.

Red lips and white teeth — too white, too _many_ — and skin the same color, with _sharp _green eyes blazing and _insane_ where there should be white lenses.

"Time to go back to sleep," the thing tells him, the _horror_, and a white hand with black nails lifts and there's metal and he can't _move _but he _knows_ how that will hurt. He knows how it will take him apart and break him all over again, and everything in him screams '_not again, please not again.'_

The metal swings down, striking high across his cheek and his vision flashes black, red, white. The crunch of bone, the sound of metal hitting flesh, isn't enough to completely drown out the laugh that drives into his ears, or the slice of another beep behind it.

_Three_.

The crowbar is held high for a moment as he chokes, blood sliding across his face and dripping down into the ornamental cushioning beneath him in the coffin, and then swings down again. It hits ribs this time, and he cries out and arches at the pain of the impact and the splintering, cracking noise of bone. The monster _laughs_, green eyes and red lips and he thought those were _safe _colors.

_Two_.

It kicks out, and his eyes widen as wood clatters into place and the light vanishes. The sound of dirt against wood is loud, echoing, and his breath freezes into place as silence settles around him again. Tears burn and slide down his face, and the darkness presses as he reaches up, _shaking_, and touches the wood.

No give, no push, no _space _in the trap of wooden walls and false kindness, and then he's _clawing _at it with both hands. It rips his fingers bloody, cracks his nails and digs splinters into his flesh, and he cries and chokes on not enough air, not enough _time_.

"_Help me_," he begs the darkness and the silence, and the drip of blood on his face to mix with the tears. But the pain in his hands is the only constant, and the scratch of nails against the wood, and the pound of his own heart, and the beep that cuts through it feels like a warning, like an _end_.

_One_.

"Bruce!" he shouts, _begging _for the grasp of a glove or a warm hand to pull him out of this _hell_.

"_No_," states a voice, firm and with a faint echo, and gloved hands slide through his hair and around to cover his eyes, and it's _better_. It's _better_. He chokes and shakes, but the hands pull him back and up and there's a warm body behind him. Taller, stronger, with the smell of gun polish and leather overriding blood and dirt.

Then the world spins and _he's _the one standing tall, a younger boy held against his chest and every insecurity and doubt hidden by the helmet on his head. The warmth of tears soaks into his gloves, and he closes his eyes and ducks his head against the black hair of the boy.

"We'll prove it to him," he says, _promises_, and the boy fades from beneath his hands. Into the hilt of a knife in his right and the grip of a gun in his left, and he lets both arms lower to rest at his sides and opens his eyes again.

He's standing on flesh and corpses, with blood pooling and scattered, the stench of death seeping into his clothes and staining everything about him, and he clenches his grip and grits his teeth against it. The bodies are civilian, normal clothes, but every face is a pair of green eyes and a red gash of a mouth. It's not right but it's necessary and he _knows _that, he _has _to know that.

"In _my _way," he promises to the memory of the boy, closing his eyes against the slaughter.

_Zero_.

* * *

He _snaps _awake at the sharp beep, eyes wide and adrenaline in his veins, pumping through his blood.

The blankness of the shadowed ceiling greets him, the glow of an idle monitor lighting it, as the alarm to his right, on the desk with his guns against the wall behind it and piles of folders playing backdrop, plays the sharp sound of its alarm at him. He stares at the numbers — zero, _midnight_ — and swallows back the phantom taste of blood, squeezing his eyes shut for a second.

He reaches over and flicks off the alarm, and the leather of his jacket — an excuse for a blanket, it's not _that _cold — falls to his lap as he sits up in the office chair, hands rising. The black of his gloves meets his gaze, and he clenches them for a moment just to reassure himself there's no pain, no stickiness of blood or crumbling wetness of damp earth against the skin beneath them. There isn't, there's nothing; his hands are clean.

Literally, anyway.

"_Bad dream?" _laughs a voice in the back of his mind that sounds a _lot _like the Joker, and he shudders and leans back in the chair, both hands coming up to drag through his hair and press against his forehead. To ground himself.

He grits his teeth and bares them in a snarl at _nothing_, at the _memories_, and he can feel himself trembling. Faintly, _barely_, but enough for anyone to notice, to _know_. Every line of him is tense, wound tight in adrenaline and a mix of fear, anger, _pain_, and he chokes back the building scream and shudders again.

"_Fuck_," he spits into the air, instead of shouting or crying or any other urge that rages at his control. Instead of letting himself fall apart. The chime of an alert, from the computer behind him, makes him flinch, and then he drags in a deep breath and drops his hands, spinning around in the chair to read it.

'Joker escapes from Arkham Asylum,' the headline announces, with a subheading reading, 'One fatality; Black Mask suspected to have engineered the breakout.'

Everything freezes around him for a moment, and then eases in the next. Anger, fear, and the memory of unforgiving metal against his skin all fade to the background, and he takes in a second breath and pushes the chair back as he gets to his feet.

Time to go to work.

* * *

So there you go. Once again, here's the picture set that inspired this: Skalidra. tumblr. (just add com) / post /109530709640 /counting-bodies-like-a-sheep

I haven't really got much to say about this other than, 'Oh, Jason, _honey_, you poor darling.' But in other news, I did in fact finish that second chapter of The Minutes Till My Heartbeat Stops, so that will go up on Saturday. It's done, it's finished! Three chapters, an amount of words I haven't counted yet, and now I just have the ideas of an after-story featuring Dick, and one collection of shorter moments from behind the scenes. (Owls don't explain much of anything, and Roy can only notice weird behavior and doesn't actually know why it is that way. XD)

Also, I have a _Tumblr _(it's the one in that link). Come, stalk me, talk to me. I will love you forever, dear readers.


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